A Case of Depression

It took two wearying months for Wyoming's conservative-minded ex-Governor Stanley K. Hathaway, 51, to get through the grilling from U.S. Senators on his nomination to be Secretary of the Interior. They demanded to know his views on strip mining, oil shale and myriad other environmental issues. As he absorbed the punishment, Hathaway often drummed his fingers on the table.

That was only the beginning of his ordeal. Immediately after his confirmation last month he plunged--with no vacation--into the demanding job of administering 540 million acres of federal land (an area about five times the size of California). He worked at least ten hours a day in his office, then carried more volumes of work home to read far into the night. And he ran the 58,000-person Interior Department without a deputy, since he and the White House have not yet been able to agree on a nominee as his top assistant.

Step Aside. Finally Hathaway told President Ford that he felt ill and had lost 15 lbs. He offered to resign. Ford brushed the suggestion aside, proposing instead that Hathaway see Rear Admiral William Lukash, the President's personal physician. After an examination, Lukash promptly ordered the Interior Secretary into Bethesda Naval Medical Center. From there last week came word that Hathaway was suffering from exhaustion and "reactive depression" (for which psychiatric care has been prescribed). He also has a mild case of diabetes, which will require no insulin, only dietary control.

At week's end, after receiving word from his doctors that his convalescence might last from two to three months, Hathaway resigned. In a statement issued by his office, he declared that "with the uncertainty about the time required for a recovery it is in the best interests of the nation that I step aside." Hathaway thus becomes the first Ford Cabinet appointee to step down--and also the shortest-tenured Interior Secretary since Thomas McKennan, who quit his office after eleven days in 1850, citing a "peculiar nervous temperament which too readily responded to excitement and depression."

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